For MrsVonTrapp, who loves "young dad" Gilbert.
A Fluttering Heart
July 1892
If it hadn't been for the flutter of white wings dancing along the curve of his paraffin lamp, Gilbert might not have looked up from his case notes. The lamp was an old one, brass and glass and not the usual sort for a doctor's study, offering as it did both imperfect light and a splendid opportunity for second-degree burns. But it had been a gift from Captain Jim, who had insisted that Anne and Gilbert take it one evening when they had missed the moment when twilight surrendered its last purple banner to the implacable night.
"Jest take it, Mistress Blythe," the old sailor had said. "Many's the time it's guided me to safe harbour, and it will do jest the same for you."
The lamp had remained on Gilbert's desk ever since, an unlikely bit of nautical decor which, like the white quahog shells lining the garden paths, was rather more charming in effect than might be have been supposed. Tonight, it had tempted a wee, white moth to flit through the open window and pay it court, the honeyed warmth of the paraffin flame limning her gossamer wings with gold.
Gilbert had been describing Sophia Crawford's most recent round of complaints, carefully recording each twinge and suspicion despite Susan's indignant mutterings that it was indecent to keep a man from his bed by playing at martyrdom. Susan had retired an hour ago and Anne an hour before that, as soon as the breeze off the harbour had chased away enough of the day's lingering heat to make even the lightest cotton sheets bearable.
In truth, Gilbert was glad to have an excuse to sit up, ceding the bed to Anne, who had long ago given up any expectation of physical comfort. No wonder, with her belly stretched to outrageous proportions and her skin perpetually incandescent with sweat. Really, babies born in July and August owed their mothers more than the usual measure of gratitude, especially babies as large as this one promised to be.
If not for the moth, free-roaming cousin to the sheer muslin curtains that rippled in the skin-cooling, sleep-giving gusts, Gilbert might have remained immersed in his notes another hour. But the movement caught his eye, the pale-dusted wing that shimmered insubstantially along the dome and the suggestion of a shadow that flickered across his outstretched hand, never quite resolving into something that could be held. The moth called Gilbert away from his ledger, which was why he looked up to find Anne standing in the door, whey-faced and silent, her undone hair a flaming nimbus and the colorless gauze of her unbuttoned nightgown undulating in time with the curtains and the wings and the little shadow that amplified to monstrous size as it crossed the room.
"Sweetheart," Gilbert said, rising from his chair to hover by her side, "whatever is the matter?"
Anne looked up with eyes as darkly gray as he had ever seen, the languid blink of copper lashes the only part of her that moved against the wind.
"Anne?"
She parted her lips as if to speak, but no sound emerged, neither on the first attempt nor the second. On the third, she whispered, but not loud enough for him to hear.
"Say again, darling," he coaxed, bending low so that his ear caught the breath of her words as well as the sound.
"I can't feel the baby moving," she said.
Gilbert bit the inside of his cheek. They had been over this a dozen times. He had comforted Anne with the sure and certain knowledge that the baby was simply too big to move around as he had done a month ago, when they had lain in bed together, watching her belly roll and ripple like the surface of a lake inhabited by some powerful but unseen serpent. They had even laughed when the child had settled into improbable positions, one day deciding to move so far to the left that Anne listed drunkenly as she walked, another preferring to dodge right in an inexplicably triangular fashion.
"An athlete, this one, or an acrobat," Gilbert had smiled.
Anne had reflected the smile back diminished, as a brass mirror rather than silvered glass. Gilbert knew that she could not anticipate this baby as she had Joy, with all the unguarded abandon of a love that had not yet had its wings pinioned. On the other side of sorrow, she had set a watch over her heart, that it might never again be ambushed.
"He's only sleeping, Anne-girl. As you should be."
She blinked again, and for a moment looked so much like she had in the moment he had told her that the wee white lady must leave them, that Gilbert's own heart seemed to falter.
"I can't feel the baby moving," she repeated, as if perhaps he had not heard her yet.
"Did you drink a glass a water?" he asked. "And lay on your side, like before?"
"I can't feel . . ."
Gilbert swallowed, or tried to, the tightness in his throat making it an aspiration rather than an action. He stepped back toward the desk and rummaged in the top drawer, drawing out his stethoscope. Careful to avoid the blistering brass, he turned out the lamp, not wanting to leave it lit and unattended. The white moth stuttered in her flight, seemingly confused to find herself suddenly in the dark. Gilbert decided to leave the window open, hoping that the waxing moon would call her back to her own place.
With exquisite gentleness, he steered Anne by the elbow, coaxing her step by step down the hallway and up the stairs to the moonlit bedroom. The windows were open here, too, the soft salt breeze flitting in one and out the other. Gilbert eased Anne out of the nightgown, which was too damp with sweat to do anything but chafe, and helped her lie down on her side.
"Alright, sweetheart," Gilbert murmured. "I'm going to have a listen and find the heartbeat."
Anne nodded and Gilbert rubbed the bell between his hands so that she would not startle at its touch. Placing the flexible rubber tubing in his ears, Gilbert went searching for the tiny heart that beat somewhere below Anne's. He had a good idea of where it might be, given that the baby had already settled into proper position for the birth, but it still took a moment to find a good angle. There it was, the steadfast flutter of a gallant little heart pumping away to beat the band.
"Absolutely perfect," he said, smiling at his wife over the full moon of her belly.
"Are you sure?"
The tremor in her voice gripped his heart. Perfectly sure, but what good did that do? Anne needed to know for herself that the life within her was strong and safe and ready to be born.
Gilbert thought a moment, worrying his lip as he listened to the swish swish swish.
"I'll be back in minute," he said, laying the stethoscope aside and planting a kiss on the apex of the great curve.
Gilbert hurried down the hall to the spare room, which was neat and tidy and ready for Marilla's imminent arrival. It was the only room that had undergone any special preparations, as no one had dared appoint the nursery. There was a small trunk in the garret packed with little love-made garments, as well as a ruffled basket which had been befrilled and belaced for dimpled limbs and downy head. But these would stay out of sight until they were needed, lest they draw every glance and thought like a vacant place set at the table.
Gilbert stripped the spare-room bed of its eyelet-lace pillows, which Marilla always insisted were too numerous and too soft to encourage a proper night's sleep, but would serve his purposes well enough.
"Can you sit up, Anne-girl?" he asked, helping her to accomplish this most monumental of tasks and tucking pillows around her like an eiderdown nest.
"Sit?" she asked.
"You can lean against the headboard," Gilbert explained. "But this way, you can lean closer to your belly, and I think you just might be able to hear for yourself."
The gray eyes snapped and Gilbert was relieved — more than relieved — to see a spark of lively interest kindle there.
"I can listen?"
"Well, you can try," he said, an impish smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. "When's the last time you touched your toes?"
"When's the last time you slept across the hall?" she shot back, and all of a sudden she was Anne again, snapped back to life, rather than hovering at its edges.
Gilbert grinned and shucked off his own clothes, climbing into bed beside Anne and their unborn child. He put the stethoscope to his own ears and located the little heart again — swish swish swish — listening until he was sure it was not just the sound of his own eager pulse.
"Take the ear tubes," he said. "I'll hold the bell in place."
Anne did as she was bid, gingerly placing the tubes in her own ears. "That's the baby?" she asked, eyes gone wide.
"Yes. He's got the strongest a heart I've ever heard."
"Or she," Anne said, giving her husband a playful poke.
"Or she," he agreed.
"It's really alright that I can't feel any movement?"
"The baby's just asleep, Anne. A week from now you'll be very glad when she's asleep at this time of night."
"A week? You really think so?"
"Any day."
Anne nodded and Gilbert's heart throbbed to see the delicate play of emotion ripple across her face. There was fear, of course, but also determination, and he thought his heart might burst in admiration.
"Here," she said, and Gilbert saw that she was offering him one of the tubes. He placed it in one ear and rested the other against Anne's shoulder, sharing the stethoscope, both of them lulled to sleep by the rhythmic swish swish swish of their ship o' dreams. They did not see the white moth flitting through the curtains to alight for the space of a single heartbeat on the sill before she fluttered back out over the garden and the harbor and on toward the summoning moon.